Political Suicide (23 page)

“Before?”

“I mean that there could have been previous occasions on that bridge when you could have been coming home from your Thursday meetings, and Partridge could have been coming back on a Dead Thursday from the House of Commons, and you could have passed. Perhaps if you realized that this was
his
bridge, the one he always crossed the river on, you yourself might have chosen that one, rather than, say, Westminster, and chosen to walk home rather than take a bus or tube. In case you had the chance of seeing the sitting MP for the seat that you were conspiring—”

“Loaded word, Superintendent.”

“Manoeuvring?”

“Still loaded.”

“—working to get the Labour nomination for yourself. Now, don't say you wouldn't have recognized him, sir. You're a political animal, he had been a junior minister. You would have made it your business to know the sitting member for Bootham. You may have been unknown to him, but he can't have been to you.
And if your paths had crossed on the bridge once, twice, or more often before, one can imagine a little idea, a possibility, sporting around in the back areas of your mind.”

“Right. I get your drift, Superintendent. It's possible, I grant you that—though I think that ordinary minds would find it a touch fantastic.”

Jerry Snaithe's accent, as he sparred with Sutcliffe, had taken on a sort of drawl—really, in fact, an upper-class drawl.

“I'm inclined to agree with you, sir. In fact, there is much about politics that the ordinary mind finds a trifle fantastic.”

“What comes next? What about the means? How did I, do you think, kill him?”

“Ah, well, there I had a tiny idea from the moment I saw the pathologist's reports. I've had a fair bit to do with deaths, in the course of my police career. Now I'm retiring I hope to have much less, while preparing for my own. When I heard about those dull bruises on the left-hand face and temple—bruises that could have been caused by contact with a boat, or the supporting pillars of the bridge, but which the doctor was somehow rather dubious about—I remembered the body of a man who'd been killed in a brawl in the back yard of a pub. He'd been killed by one of the killer karate blows that leave practically no trace—a blow with the open hand against the side of the face and temple. Fortunately in this case there were witnesses, and no question as to who had done it. Actually, sir, he was an ex-SAS man like yourself: received his karate training in the Service.”

Jeremy Snaithe shifted in his chair, but looked at Sutcliffe hard and long.

“My army service is a matter of record. I've never tried to hide it.”

“Certainly it's a matter of record. But you've never actually proclaimed it, have you, sir? It would hardly go down well with most of your supporters.”

“It was a youthful aberration, a hangover from public school. Thank God I grew out of that phase.”

“But did you actually grow out of that phase, sir? My information is that you left the SAS, very reluctantly, under a cloud. What was the story, now? Three rather pathetic Palestinian terrorists, obviously incompetent, holding a hostage in the Israeli consulate in Liverpool, back in 1974. The police were expecting to be able to talk them out without much difficulty, but the SAS were there in reserve, as usual, and you went in through a back door, on your own initiative, and the result was one dead terrorist, two severely injured, and a hostage with a bullet through his thigh. It was shortly after that, by mutual agreement, that you parted company with the Service. When you first went into Labour politics you swung, as people like you so often do, from one extreme to the other—one set of whites becomes black, another set of blacks becomes white. You have to have absolutes to believe in totally. What certainly didn't alter was the fact that you had the training of a killer.”

“Which you think I used on Jim Partridge?”

“Which I think you used on Jim Partridge. Let's put the most charitable interpretation possible on it: which I think, completely on impulse, finding that bridge unusually empty of traffic, you used on Jim Partridge.”

There was silence in the interview room. Jerry Snaithe continued looking hard at Sutcliffe. Then suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he smiled.

“Prove it,” he said.

Oh, that smile! How often had Sutcliffe seen it in the course of this investigation. From Arthur Tidmarsh, from Antony Craybourne-Fisk, from Derek Manders. It was the smile of engaging political roguery. It was the smile that said: Look—you know, I know, that I'm in it for what I can get out of it, but—what the hell—aren't there rogues in your profession too? It was a smile that mixed complicity with a dare, a smile that invited you into the circle of clever rogues, a smile that presupposed a camaraderie of the self-seeking and the morally suspect. It was a smile that told Sutcliffe that his long-shot guess had been right.

“Oh, there's really no question of that, sir,” he said, easily and amicably, and as he said it he got up.

“Oh?” said Jerry, looking up at him almost aggrieved, as if he had a sense of anti-climax, as if a duel he was going to participate in had been called off.

“No question at all. I've known that pretty much all along, sir. That's why I've done much of this in my own time. Once the boys doing the leg-work had established in the first day or two after the murder that nobody had actually seen anything suspicious, and taking that in conjunction with the state of the body, which presented no indisputable signs of murder, I knew this meant there was hardly the remotest chance of getting a conviction. After motive, opportunity, means, there comes that vital question of evidence. Anything I've done in this case, sir, has really been for my own satisfaction.”

“An abstract passion for justice?” inquired Jerry, sardonically.

“An abstract passion for
truth
, sir. I'm afraid there is little chance of justice. You will go back to your political career, whatever it may be, I'll go into retirement. You will know, I will know, and perhaps one or two others will suspect. But justice? No, alas—because I believe in justice—you'll never be brought to book.”

“And you're just letting me go now?” Jerry asked, with that aggrieved bewilderment.

“That's right, sir. What else can I do? Are you thinking it would make a better story if I kept you here all through the count and the declaration? Make you more of a victim-hero to your friends and supporters, after you've lost? I'm sure your young henchmen have prepared the ground. No, sir, you're free to go. It's only five past eleven, and three minutes to the Town Hall. You'll probably have an hour before the declaration. I don't have to throw you out of the station, do I, sir?”

With another smile of complicity, which somehow came out slightly cracked, Jerry got up and marched out of the room with that long, striding, military walk, that Tory country landowner's walk, that suddenly made Sutcliffe think that in a way, James Partridge had been killed by one of his own party.

• • •

When Sutcliffe had gathered up his papers, he went out to the front office and found the duty sergeant looking intently at a portable television set placed unorthodoxly on his counter.

“Seems like we're famous, sir. Fancy a cup of cold
tea?” And he looked hard at Superintendent Sutcliffe with a policeman's version of that smile of complicity.

“Thanks. I often find cold tea warming on a night like this.” And so, gratefully, it proved. “What have they been saying?” he asked, nodding at the set, with its chaotic pictures of piles of ballot papers and distraught officials.

“Speculating about this Snaithe's absence from the count, first of all. Then they got this rumour that he was at the station here. That gave the commentators a chance to talk about rumours concerning James Partridge's death that they said had been surfacing now and then in the course of the campaign.”

“Hmmm. Jerry's little helpers have been busy.”

“Why would they do that, sir?”

“At a nod from their boss. I think he knows he's lost the election and he aims to divert attention by some sort of sensation about police victimization. It will go down very well with all the people who support him, except that I let him go so soon everyone will know we hardly had time to do more than pass the time of day. Anyway, it's a new source of excitement for him, it will satisfy the craving for a bit. But when I let him go, you could feel the disappointment: he was banking on an all-night grilling, and inch-high headlines.”

“What's behind it, sir? Is it the death of Mr Partridge, like they've been saying?”

“Oh yes, it's the death of Partridge. The murder of Partridge. Only it's never going to be that officially now.”

And sitting there over their “cold tea,” and then over another, Sutcliffe told the sergeant something of his
poking round into the death of Bootham's MP. He was just getting round to Jerry, his SAS training, and his opportunity, when the gentleman-commentator at Bootham Town Hall began to show signs of excitement.

“It's coming . . . I think the Declaration is imminent . . . yes, the Returning Officer is coming forward . . .”

Sutcliffe broke off as a heavy and self-important individual laboriously unburdened himself of the customary phrases:

“As returning officer for the constituency of Bootham East . . .”

“Get on with it,” muttered Sutcliffe.

“ . . . the following votes cast: Edward Armstrong, the Bring Back Hanging candidate, two hundred and fifty . . .”

“Oh Christ, we've got to go through the loonies,” swore Sutcliffe, to the offence of the sergeant, who had voted for Armstrong himself.

“Booth, Helen, Women for the Bomb, one hundred and six; Carter, Edward, National Front, six hundred and twenty; Craybourne-Fisk, Antony, twelve thousand, three hundred and sixteen . . .”

The Town Hall was rent by cheers, but Sutcliffe's sharp ear detected a hollowness behind them, an element of whistling in the dark, as if Antony's supporters knew that was not good enough.

“If I'm not mistaken, Bootham has not elected one of the New Tories,” he murmured.

“Crotch, Peter Thomas, Top of the Pops,” pursued the official, impervious to any sense of the ridiculous,
“seven hundred and twenty; Fermor-Meddibrook, Constance, Home Rule for England, one hundred and seven; Fust, Jason, John Lennon Lives, forty-seven; Manciple, Michael, Richard III Was Innocent, seventeen; Nubble, Frederick, Communist, five hundred and ninety-four; Popperwell, June, Britain Out of the Common Market, one thousand and ten . . .”

“A surprisingly good result there,” purred the commentator.

“Get on, you burk,” snarled Sutcliffe.

“Singh, Percival Richard, Transcendental Meditation, eighty-six; Snaithe, Jeremy, Labour Party, thirteen thousand and forty-seven . . .”

Again, tremendous cheers rent the Town Hall, but again . . . could it be . . . ?

“Ward, Humphrey, Transvestite Meditation, seven; Worthing, Oliver, Social Democratic Party, fourteen thousand one hundred and—”

But his voice was drowned by a tremendous yell of middle-class radicals, countered by howls of disappointment from the young supporters of Jerry, and in the body of the hall the cameras focused on the beginnings of several scuffles, with the police immediately moving in. If the vote for Zachariah Zzugg, the I'm Coming Last candidate, ever got announced, Sutcliffe did not hear it.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “I wondered if he'd make it.”

“Can't understand it, myself,” said the sergeant. “Seems a funny result for Bootham.”

“I don't know about that. It's vindicated the democratic process: it's sent to Westminster someone no
body much wanted, but nobody much objected to, and seen packing two people whom little groups of enthusiasts liked, but people in general couldn't stand. It means that people saw through them.”

“Tell me more about this Snaithe, sir . . .”

And Sutcliffe did, breaking off only when, on the tiny screen, he saw the defeated candidates coming forward to give their speeches, their verbal gestures of acquiescence to the democratic will. Antony was first of the major ones, hideously disappointed behind an upper lip that was not so much stiff as paralysed.

“ . . . Perhaps I shouldn't have hoped that at this time, after the government has had to take tough decisions—necessary, right decisions, but tough ones for the people of Bootham—that I could maintain a majority won by a very much loved predecessor . . .”

“Bullshit,” said Sutcliffe.

Jeremy hid his disappointment better. Was not his speciality coming up for the fourth time?

“We've seen during this by-election a media campaign of vilification and misrepresentation of unprecedented proportions, culminating tonight in events that I think most of you will have heard about by now. When the working people of this country are fed a diet of lies of this kind, we shouldn't be surprised . . .”

“Bullshit,” said Sutcliffe, and in a moment turned away from the box, on which Oliver Worthing was now meandering through a speech of thanks both too long and too grammatically convoluted.

“What you're saying, sir,” pursued the sergeant, “is that you think he did it, that Labour bloke.”

“I know he did it. He gave me that smile, that smile
that said: ‘OK, I admit it, but prove it. You never will.' And he was quite right. I never will.”

“Is there
no
way, sir? Surely it's early days yet?”

“No way, except by an actual, unimpeachable witness, or preferably more than one. It's not early days for witnesses. The time's long past for them.”

“What you're saying, then, sir, is that he's going to get away with murder?”

Sutcliffe downed the last of his cold tea.

“Don't politicians always?”